


Sometimes You Just Need a Shoulder

by YamiTami



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Alyx is cute, Depression, Dog is cute, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone is cute, F/M, Gen, Gordon Speaks, Gordon has so much Trauma, Gordon is cute, Mental Breakdown, Pre-Het, Sleepy Cuddles, Unresolved Romantic Tension, and shouting JUST KISS, around this point even the Vortigaunts are halfway to grabbing them, shaking them by the shoulders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 07:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5038984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiTami/pseuds/YamiTami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t suppose you have a moment?” So shy and vaguelly out of place. There was definitely something weighing on his mind, though Alyx couldn’t guess what specifically. Throw a rock in Black Mesa East and you hit twelve problems.</p><p>Alyx took his hand and squeezed reassuringly. “For you, Gordon? Anytime.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes You Just Need a Shoulder

The soft knock at Alyx’s door came, of course, right as she got the fiddliest circuit she ever had the misfortune of meeting in place and ready to solder. Thankfully she grew up knees-to-elbows with animated scientists arguing about quantum tunneling, often-loud R&D of new weaponry, soldiers discussing strategy, counter-Bcast propaganda artists talking composition, revolutionary musicians doing the same and with liberal application of drums, usually all in the same room… so she didn’t so much as twitch. “Come on in,” she called without looking up, gently touching the wire to the port while calling on the vortessence to _please_ keep the damn thing aligned until the solder cooled.

The door opened and closed and Dog’s servos shifted in the pattern reserved for the wriggly dance he does when he’s excited but has been asked not to move, but her visitor didn’t speak. Alyx smiled as she she worked.

“Hey, Gordon,” she greeted as she flicked off her soldering torch and stowed all the little bits away. Alyx grabbed her half finished work, his HEV suit chestplate, and swiveled around to face him. 

“Hello, Alyx,” he returned. A couple weeks ago he finally managed to find some clothes that suited him: loose black jeans, a gray button up shirt patched with water-stained winter camo, and a faded green sweater. Definitely a lot less depressing than the standard civilian drab blues he wore in the meantime. The sweater looked good on him, though Alyx could admit, at least to herself, that she’d think he looked good in _anything_.

She rolled her eyes fondly at the antsy display going on in the corner. “Yes, Dog, you can move now. Go say hi.”

Dog vocalized happily and ambled around their visitor. The robot was very careful not to knock over any of Alyx’s things, and given the cluttered nature of her room this meant he mostly knocked over Gordon.

“Be careful, boy!” she shook her head at the demonstration of affection, Dog turning a tight circle around his human friend and Gordon chuckling and patting the robot’s face fins. Being reminded of how quickly Dog accepted the bespeckled, orange human into his pack always brought a smile to Alyx’s face. By the time she introduced the two of them she already liked Gordon quite a bit and seeing her boys hit it off so well was one of those bright spots of light in the darkness.

Alyx held up the chestplate. “You’ll be happy to know I finally figured out what was bugging the voice system.”

Gordon gently shoved Dog away and pulled up a stool, carefully taking the offered chestplate and squinting into the mass of wiring still exploding out of it. “That’s a relief. Aside from the annoyance factor the constant chirping about a nonexistent massive fracture draws unwanted attention. Like hunters.”

She nodded. “Even the less intelligent creatures like headcrabs or CPs.”

He grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Man, he looked good in that sweater.

Alyx took the chestplate back, tweaked a couple wires back into place, and set it back down on her soldering table. “So, what’s up?”

“I don’t suppose you have a moment?” So shy and vaguely out of place. There was definitely something weighing on his mind, though Alyx couldn’t guess what specifically. Throw a rock in Black Mesa East and you hit twelve problems.

Alyx took his hand and squeezed reassuringly. “For you, Gordon? Anytime.”

It killed her, sometimes, how deeply a simple act of friendship could effect him. Gordon just looked so intensely, desperately grateful it hurt.

She checked over her workstation again and stood. “Dog? Stay, okay?” She patted his optic affectionately.

Dog nodded and bounded to his corner, turned in a circle, and curled up on his bed of stray scraps and bits of wire. 

“Step into my office,” she joked with a dramatic gesture, strolling around the makeshift wall of paneling and broken crates with an old scrap of patched tarp serving as the door between her workshop and bedroom. Gordon mutely followed. Alyx shucked off her jacket, kicked off her shoes, and climbed onto her bed, shoving the mountain of blankets against the wall. She sat back in her ‘couch’ with her legs crossed and looked up at Gordon expectantly. Usually he settled in beside her, one lanky leg stretched out and the other bent so he could rest his arms on his knee, but this time he hung back with his hands in his pockets like he didn’t feel like he belonged. He did that the first time, not quite bridging the cultural gap between his standpoint of Before where a bed and couch were two completely different things and her standpoint of After where everything served at least three cobbled-together purposes, but around the time they shifted from Dr. Freeman and Miss Vance to Gordon and Alyx the awkwardness stopped.

Alyx chewed her lip. She wanted to ask what was wrong, what was bothering him, did she say something wrong, are his ribs still sore… but she knew that wouldn’t be what he needed. He said it often enough, sometimes absent minded and mumbled, sometimes staring deep into her eyes and full of meaning, that she never asked anything of him. She did, technically, but not to the ‘we are counting on you to shoulder the weight of the world’ degree everyone else did. She just asked him for help with the HEV suit, or walking Dog, or something else she didn’t _need_ him for but _wanted_ him for.

So she took a page out of his book and didn’t say anything. After two minutes and sixteen seconds of looking at his socks Gordon huffed, a half-laugh at himself which Alyx recognized, and then he looked up at her and smiled gratefully. It wasn’t Alyx’s own megawatt beaming or Barney’s good old boy grin, just the corners of his mouth quirking up, nearly obscured by his beard. But his eyes, oh, his eyes. People who claimed that Dr. Gordon Freeman was impossible to read couldn’t be looking him in the eyes. Alyx’s chest felt full and pleasantly warm. She loved that smile.

“Can I…” he trailed off, huffed again with a shake of his head, and then he crossed the room and climbed onto the bed. He settled in on her right like he always did, one leg straight and one leg bent, sitting close enough that her knee touched his thigh. There was that familiar what-do-I-do-with-this-crush pleasant heat at the point of contact, but her worry over Gordon’s cagey behavior put that on the back burner.

“Can I,” he began again, “can I ask you something?”

Alyx smiled shyly and fiddled with her fingers. “Gordon, you can ask me anything.”

“You might regret saying that,” he mumbled. “When… when you look at me, what do you see?”

She shifted to sit facing him with her legs curled up to the side, grabbing her pillow so she could comfortably lean her head against the wall. “I can see you’re feeling off. Down?”

He shook his head. “That’s not… well, you’re not wrong, but I mean... “ Gordon aggressively scratched his scalp, leaving his hair sticking up at odd angles. “ _Who_ do you see? Dr. Freeman or the Orange Lambda or Anticitizen One or… or The One Free Man…”

Alyx worried at her lip. The way he said ‘The One Free Man’, he just sounded so very _lost_. She considered her next words carefully.

“I didn’t really know what to expect, you know, when I first met you.” She chuckled nervously. “Well, met you _again_ for the first time. I kind of dimly remember you, from Black Mesa, but it’s not much and I’m not sure how much got mixed up. Memory is funny that way.”

“Yes, it is.”

Gordon stared at the makeshift wall. Alyx continued.

“I think… I think I liked your hair? Said… it was pretty, maybe?”

“Like…” he recalled slowly, an even more distant look on his face. “Like the sunset.”

She smiled sadly, bittersweet. “Yeah. Like the sunset.” She sighed. “But I only met you once or twice and what I remember isn’t very informative. So I had the stories. I had the, the legends and folklore like everyone, but… I grew up around what’s left of Black Mesa.”

Gordon winced, and she winced with him. That wound was still fresh for him, and she hated that he never even got the slow, horrible grind of a break the others did before everything was on fire again.

“I grew up hearing the legends and I grew up hearing the first hand accounts that turned into legends. Stories about how you handled yourself during the Resonance Cascade, how your first priority was everyone’s safety, how you took it in stride when they told you someone had to go to Xen and take out whatever was holding the portals open…”

The pained, faraway look got worse. Alyx scooted closer, the angle of her folded legs fitting neatly under his bent knee, and placed a gentle hand on his arm. “Gordon, look at me, please.”

He took a deep, shuddery breath and did so. The cracks were already showing in his armor and Alyx had a feeling she knew how this was going to go. Growing up in the Resistance you got used to recognizing trauma and its effects.

“I also grew up on the stories Dr. Kleiner would tell about his student.” She smiled fondly at the memory. “How you turned in a paper electronically and forgot to delete all the shockingly rude placeholder comments about quantum entanglement, academic funding, and the dean, and how you nearly passed out when he told you what you did.”

He actually laughed at that, a ray of sunshine through the clouds but the storm still rolled in.

“Then Dad talking about how you were absolutely brilliant but had no idea how to work an alarm clock so you were always running late. Or Barney talking about bar crawls and your races to break into Dr. Kleiner’s office. I got to talk to Dr. Cross and Dr. Green before we left for City 17 and the radio silence went up. Dr. Green would talk about how you were kind of awkward and shy and Dr. Cross would say you’d fiercely stand up for anyone who was being bullied…”

He looked back at her and braced for impact. She squeezed his arm and kept going, soft and sincere. 

“And then I met you. The real deal.”

There was that huffing breath of a laugh. “Disappointed?”

“No. Never.” Her brows knitted together in a broken, worried line. “Gordon… I see _you_. I don’t see the legends, though I can see how they got started in the first place. But when I look at you I see _you_. Just… this brilliant guy who’s awkward with strangers but so warm with his friends, who’s sweet and kind but if you do something to really draw his anger it’ll be a supernova down your throat and you will deserve it, just… just this guy trying to do what’s right but I think… I think he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders and it’s just… heavy.”

“I’m trying,” he promised, the calm fading away and the armor breaking. His shoulders started shaking with the effort of keeping it bottled, all that pressure. “I really, really am. Everyone expects _so much_ of me, they think i’m invincible,—” it all came out in a rush, his voice wavering— “they think I’m the fixed point, the lever that moves the Earth, and I just… it doesn’t _end_ , and I don’t… I don’t know...”

“Gordon.”

“I’m just so _tired_ of being _strong_.”

Her heart _ached_ at the pain in his voice, his face, his whole being. “Gordon, I know.”

“Alyx, I don’t—” hot tears rolled down his face and he looked at her with despair, desperation, “—I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”

“I know. I’m _here_.”

Gordon buried his face in his hands and forcefully took a couple measured breaths. A losing battle if there ever was one, and in this case he surrendered. He leaned into her, blindly reaching, and she rearranged them to put her back to the wall with him on his side, face shoved into her chest as the first wrenching, gulping sobs shook out of him. There were words in there, muffled in her hoodie and swallowed by his shuddering, an Alyx didn’t try to make them out.

She just focused on rubbing his back, smoothing down his hair, and holding him tight as he held onto her for dear life.

~~*~~

Gordon woke slowly, caught between some dream he didn’t remember and the undeniable truth that waking up meant dealing with the trials of the day. As he came back to himself he registered the absence of the HEV suit—no skintight bodysuit, no familiar, comforting pressure from the various panels and plates—and neglected to force himself up. The two options were ‘safe at Black Mesa East’ or ‘dead’ and he could afford to sleep in either way. 

Odd, though, being face-down in the mattress. Usually he slept on his back. It was uneven too, though not in an unpleasant way. A couch? Maybe he passed out on the lumpy, duct tape uncrusted number in the mess hall. Except he couldn’t hear anyone milling around. In fact, all he heard was the soft sound of breathing in time with the gentle rise and fall of the couch…

_Oh._

Suddenly far more awake than he wanted to be, Gordon lifted his head and found himself staring at gray hoodie, a smooth neck, and an unusual box-shaped jewel.

“Oh, hey Gordon, you’re up.”

He didn’t remember this happening—everything became a blur after he lost grip on his control—but at some point Alyx piled her blankets up into a soft wedge, lay down on it with her head to the corner of the room, and pulled Gordon down curled up on top of her to finish his crying fit. He lay half beside her, half on her, with his head tucked up under her chin, her arms wound around him in a close hug, and their legs tangled.

It felt so painfully _right_ and _safe_ and he pull out of her grasp because damn everything when he came to talk to her he didn’t plan on it going like this.

Then he realized something.

Simple biological cause and effect. Tears drain through the tear ducts into the sinus. With increased tear production, such as during a knock down breakdown, the volume of drainage is greatly increased, leading to a great deal of thin, runny nasal mucus. Given a typical gravitational situation the mucus will succumb to the pull of gravity and flow out the nostrils. If a foreign body is not present to catch the mucus then it will flow down the face. If the subject, for instance, has stylish facial hair then the mucus will be caught in the hair and dry into a mess.

Or, in layman’s terms, crunchy snot beards are _not pleasant_.

Gordon moved back to sit on his heels and aggressively scrubbed his face with his sleeve. His mortification only increased when he realized he got Alyx’s hoodie _and_ neck wet when he cried himself out. He hoped he could pass the hot, embarrassed flush off as a result of friction. Alyx propped herself up on her elbows, a relaxed, lazy counterpoint to his frantic scramble. 

“Hey, Dog? Come here, boy!” she called, and after a few moments of shuffling Dog peeked around the tarp curtain. If he had a tail it would be between his legs. It never ceased to amaze Gordon how something that really looked nothing like a dog could still look _so much_ like a dog. The robot slunk in all hunched to the ground and his face fins pinned back. Cautiously, Dog got one forearm and his head up on the bed and nudged Gordon’s knee.

“Oh…” Gordon froze and then slowly lowered his arm. Trying to get the mess out of his beard with his sleeve was a losing battle anyway—how long did they sleep? “I guess you heard me.”

“Mmm hmm, Dog’s good at picking up on emotional distress in his pack, aren’t you boy?”

The ‘I’m a good boy’ nod wasn’t as energetic as it usually was. Dog’s single optic, somehow so expressive in spite of its simplicity, solemnly looked back and forth between his two humans.

Gordon grabbed the top fin and gently shook it, Dog’s version of a scratch behind the ears. “Sorry for worrying you, boy. I’m okay now.”

Dog perked up, though the friendly headbutt still wasn’t quite up to its usual force. Alyx leaned over to pet his arm.

“Hey Dog, can you do something for me?” She asked, and laughed at his enthusiastic nod. Gordon felt the corners of his mouth tug up in spite of his lingering melancholy; he would never get enough of that infectious laugh. “Okay, boy, go get a _clean_ cloth and a little bit of the _clean_ water in a bowl. Okay?”

Dog nodded, happy to be of use, and scampered off through the curtain and out the door.

“How are you feeling?” Alyx asked. She grabbed his glasses off her bedside table and handed them to him, and the world had edges again.

“... Do I have to answer that?” Gordon mumbled at last. He couldn’t quite meet her eye.

“You don’t have to, no,” Alyx replied, voice level. “I hope you do, though. I want to help.”

He snorted. “I don’t think anyone can help this, I…” the bitterness drained away. He just didn’t have the energy for anger right then. He shook his head. “I don’t know, Alyx, I really don’t.”

She did that cute thing where she bit at her lower lip. “Do you… need to take a break from active duty?”

“What? No! I mean,” he sighed and scratched his cheek. “I’m needed out there.”

“Gordon, don’t get me wrong on this because you’ve been an incredible asset to the Resistance.” Alyx smiled as if at a good memory. “A destructive, explosive force of nature in all the best ways. But we _did_ get by before you dropped back into the world.”

“I know you did, that’s not.” He gazed out at the far wall. “This is why I don’t talk much. I’m not very good at it.”

Things were silent for a while. She nudged his leg with her foot, and without really thinking about it Gordon reached down and rested his hand on her ankle. He looked back at Alyx and sighed deeply.

“I know you can manage without me,” he said, nearly a whisper. “I just… I don’t know if I can manage in here.”

Alyx absently rubbed his leg with her foot and he absently rubbed her ankle with his thumb.

Gordon shrugged. “When I’m out there fighting I have momentum, I suppose? There’s not time to feel all this… this _nothing_. I’m doing something out there on missions, I’m helping people, making up for—”

Even as a man of the abstracted sciences Gordon knew that most of Freud’s theories were bunk. The point about slips of the tongue, though, that held water.

“—I’m moving, out there, and in here I feel like everything just…” Gordon trailed off helplessly. “Just stops and turns grey. Hmph, that’s not a very good reason, is it?”

“It’s one I’ve heard before,” Alyx said carefully. “Is that what’s bothering you?”

“I’m losing faith in my ability to survive the quiet times when no one’s trying to kill me.”

“I have faith in you, Gordon.”

God, and she meant it, even after seeing him like this. “I must be instilling _such_ confidence right now,” he grumbled, more at himself than at her.

Alyx glared at him. “It’s not like that. Damn, Gordon, you’re _human_. Maybe other people get caught up in the legend, but I know _you_. I’m not going to hold it against you if you act like a person instead of a story.”

Gordon didn’t know how to respond to that. He didn’t fault these people for how things turned out, what they believed, but so _few_ of them treated him like a person. None of them treated him like Alyx did. Probably because there was no one like Alyx.

Her features softened into worry. “Are you going to be okay, Gordon?”

“I’m fine.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Just tired, I guess. There’s nothing wrong.”

“Riiiight. Just ‘tired’. Absolutely nothing else. You’re totally fine.”

Gordon stared down death without flinching nearly every day, but he knew better than to mess with Alyx when she took that tone of voice. “There are still lingering signs that I’m not fine,” he conceded. The fact that he couldn’t even properly appreciate the way her t-shirt rode up, for one. God, but he had it bad.

Dog’s return saved him from that line of thought. Gordon accepted the bowl and rag gratefully. After receiving his due pets and praise Dog curled up on the floor next to the bed. Gordon attacked his face with the damp cloth and soon felt much less of a wreck. Seeing the still-damp fabric of Alyx’s hoodie and knowing there must be more dried to her skin, Gordon handed her the bowl and then leaned forward, bracing his weight on his now-free hand, and reached out with the rag to wipe down her neck. He hesitated, though, and then pulled back stiffly. Finally he held the rag out of her to take.

Alyx shook her head at him and rolled her eyes, a familiar gesture as her friends often exasperated her. Gordon counted himself infinitely lucky to be counted among that number. He sat there, unsure of what to do, as she wiped off her neck and then set the rag and bowl aside. Alyx wriggled out of her hoodie and dropped it off the side of the bed to land on Dog’s head. Then, to Gordon’s surprise, she lay back in her nest of blankets and held her arm out in invitation.

A big part of him wanted to wave it off, go back to pretending that he just needed the one good cry and nothing more. But a stronger part was still just so _tired_. 

Alyx beamed at him, brighter than the sun, as he crawled back over and settled back down the way they were before. Gordon counted all this worth it just to see that smile. She stroked his back as they settled into the bed and each other.

“I’ve got your back, Gordon. And you’ve got mine, right?”

He nodded into her chest. With his ear pressed to her ribcage he could hear the steady thrum of her heart. “Always. Though you see my back more often than I see yours.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining about the view.”

Everything still hurt, but he smiled at that. Gordon twisted to look up at Alyx, her expression tender and worried and _god, but she is so beautiful_. The thought occurred that it would be so easy to kiss her. He didn’t, though, everything still too raw to consider taking a risk like that. Besides, it was so nice just to lay there with her with no other expectations. If he needed any more confirmation as to how deep he was this would be it. Gordon just wanted to sleep next to her. He wanted to wake up next to her.

“Thank you,” he breathed, half hoping Alyx took it as a response to her less than subtle confession about staring at his ass instead of the all-encompassing message ‘thank you for saving me thank you for being my friend’.

He settled back using her chest as a pillow and she squeezed him tight. “Gordon… it’s hard. It’s really, really hard. And when it comes to… we have access to medicine, but only so much, so if you can function without it then we really can’t spare it in your direction.”

“Oh.” Gordon wasn’t expecting to be diagnosed. “I’m. No. I’ll… let you know if things change but. No. I can get by without antidepressants. I’m difficult anyway, back in college… it took a while to find one that worked. Nearly flunked out… I haven’t been back on them for years.”

“Okay,” she smoothed down his hair and gently scratched the back of his neck. It felt nice. “Then there’s support. Which you have, and if you don’t take advantage of that then I’m going to throw something at you. Talk to me, talk to Barney, talk to Dr. Kleiner, talk to Dad, Dog, whoever. We’ll help keep you grounded, keep you moving. Okay?”

“Okay.” He idly traced his fingertips across her stomach, following the lines of her shirt’s geometric design. Apparently she wasn’t ticklish. “You seem to have some experience with this.”

Alyx nodded, or at least, came close what with him tucked under her chin. “This environment is kind of unforgiving to people who are predisposed. We see this a lot.”

Gordon took a deep breath. “So you don’t… you don’t think…”

“What?” She coaxed him up, leaning on his arm, so she could take his face in both her hands and make sure he _looked_ at her. Alyx’s brown eyes bored into his and left no room for interpretation. “”Do I think less of you’? Gordon, _no_. This isn’t anything that’s your fault. Hell, I’m even more impressed with you now than I was before. Fighting is hard enough when you’re just fighting CPs and headcrabs, let alone when you’re fighting your own brain, too.”

Alyx kissed him on the cheek and then looked really embarrassed about it. Gordon smiled and kissed her on the forehead. 

“Dork,” she teased fondly.

“Right back at’cha,” he mumbled as he snuggled back under her chin.


End file.
